Author McCullough to speak at MU graduation

Author David McCullough will give the commencement speech for Marquette University graduates this spring, the school announced Monday.

Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen, co-founder and CEO of Growing Power, will be among the recipients of honorary degree's at Marquette's May 22 ceremony at the Bradley Center.

Here is Marquette's announcement.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough will be the speaker for Marquette University’s spring 2011 Commencement ceremony Sunday, May 22, at the Bradley Center, 1001 N. 4th St., at 9:30 a.m.

Acclaimed as a “master of the art of narrative history,” McCullough won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Harry Truman, Truman, and for his most recent biography of another president, John Adams. He won the National Book Award twice – in 1982 for the biography Mornings on Horseback and in 1978 for The Path Between the Seas about the creation of the Panama Canal. Other books by McCullough include 1776, The Johnstown Flood, Brave Companions and The Great Bridge. His work has been published in 10 languages and, in all, more than 9 million copies are in print. None of his books has ever been out of print.

A graduate of Yale University, McCullough has received more than 40 honorary degrees. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, and has been honored with the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award and the National Humanities Medal.

McCullough has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer and familiar figure on public television – as host of Smithsonian World and the American Experience and narrator of numerous documentaries, including The Civil War. He is the narrator’s voice in the movie Seabiscuit.

As part of the Commencement ceremony, McCullough will receive an honorary degree from Marquette, along with three others:

Will Allen, co-founder and CEO of Growing Power, which develops Community Food Systems to provide high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable food for all residents in the community. Growing Power has farms in Milwaukee and Merton, Wis., and Chicago, and satellite-training sites in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Mississippi. Through its own sites and a network of 300 family farmers, Growing Power sells crops to area restaurants and food cooperatives. Allen graduated from the University of Miami in 1971. After a brief career in professional basketball and a number of years in corporate marketing, he returned to his roots as a farmer. Allen received a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a “genius grant,” in 2008.

Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Marquette is one of 10 higher education institutions named a Changemaker Campus by the Ashoka Institute. Since 1981, Ashoka has elected more than 2,500 social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support and access to a global network of peers in 70 countries. Drayton is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School. Prior to founding Ashoka, he was assistant administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, founded and led Save EAP and Environmental Safety, worked in the White House and taught both law and management at Stanford Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Catherine Rick, chief officer in the Office of Nursing Services for the Department of Veteran Affairs, provides leadership and guidance to VA’s 75,000 nursing personnel, who care for nearly 6 million veterans each year. She is responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of VA’s national policy and strategic planning activities, including clinical care, education, research, backup to the Department of Defense and emergency preparedness. Prior to her present position, Rick was the nurse executive at the Zablocki VA Medical Center in Milwaukee. She has been recognized by the Wisconsin Organization of Nurse Executives and received Marquette’s Distinguished Alumna in Nursing Award in 2004.

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